Note:The majority of the procedures I demonstrate
in the series are undertaken within MS Office Access 2003, but are
applicable to earlier versions of MS Access. However, the concepts that we
explore in this article will apply to MS Office Access 2003 and beyond
only, as the functionality we will explore is new in MS Office Access 2003.

Overview

In the
last article of this series,
MS
Access as a Documentation Tool: Database Diagramming,we began an examination of the use
of various MS Access features as documentation tools. We focused on meeting
the important need of diagramming our databases for several reasons, including
the support of a data dictionary as well as various enterprise reporting and
other development efforts.

In this article, we
will examine a feature that is new in MS Office Access 2003, and which offers
great potential in our documentation, maintenance, and general upkeep efforts,
from the perspective of the organizations MS Access databases. In MS Office
Access 2003, we can directly and easily view information on dependencies
between database objects. The capability to view a list of a database's
objects, particularly within the context of how those objects relate to each
other, can help us to maintain a database over time. The capability is perhaps
most useful in helping us to avoid errors that emerge with the uninformed
removal of record sources or other databases objects, but numerous other
potential uses exist, as well.

Many of us are familiar
with a scenario within which we have inherited a database environment that
contains duplicate, non-working, or other objects of questionable utility. The
reasons for the "object graveyard" are legion, but we can well
understand that, for successful DBAs and developers, organization is certainly
a virtue. The need to purge objects that are useless, or of unknown origin /
vintage, is, in these cases, second only to the need to ascertain that they
are, indeed, truly useless. To that end, the need to verify that dependencies
do not exist between the valid objects and the suspect object(s) is critical.

We often need to
generate a quick view of the dependencies among objects when we undertake such
a housecleaning. With this, and other scenarios, in mind, Microsoft
incorporated the capability to view object dependencies in MS Office Access
2003. In this article, we will explore
using this capability for documentation and maintenance support purposes. We
will:

Discuss our objectives
within the article, and present a scenario upon which we will base our practice
example;

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